Many electrical connectors are in the form of pin headers. The pin header contains a pin field which is mounted to the body of the header and each of the pins of the pin field are soldered to an electrical circuit board using either surface mount techniques or pin through-holes. The pin header is designed to receive a complementary mating connector which is typically terminated in a socket.
It is typically desirable that the pin header include a housing, or shroud, which extends above the height of the pin field. This is because such connectors are often "blind mated", which refers to the fact that the two connector halves are not always directly visible to the person mating them together. Blind mating is not practical if there is no shroud structure to provide guidance to the complementary mating connector. When blind mating a complementary connector to such a pin header without a shroud, there is no structure on the pin header to assure that the pins in the pin header and the receptacle contacts in the complementary mating connector are aligned before mating forces are applied. This can be potentially damaging, resulting in bent pins or misaligned connectors. Upon unmating a mated complementary connector from such an unshrouded pin header, there is nothing to prevent the mating connector from being tilted and thus removed in an arc rather than being removed parallel to the direction of the pins. Such an arcuate removal path, known as peeling, can also result in bent pins.
Therefore, connectors are often formed with integral housings which form a shroud that completely, or substantially completely, surrounds the pin field and extends to a height that is above the height of the pin field. Such a shroud guides the mating connector into alignment with the pin field before mating pressures are applied between the two connector halves. This presents a problem, however, in that the connectors are formed in many different sizes, each size having a specified number of pins in the pin field. Because such connectors are formed with a housing shroud encircling the pin field, it is necessary to keep an inventory of each connector size in stock, greatly increasing the inventory carrying costs. If the integral housing shroud were not required, the pin fields could be stocked in long strips and merely "cut to position" (i.e. cut to the desired length for the connector size required), as is presently done with unshrouded connectors. This would greatly decrease the inventory carrying costs because separate connector sizes would not have to be carried in inventory.
There is therefore a need in the connector industry for a way to provide shrouded connectors without requiting that many sizes of connectors be carried in inventory. The present invention is directed toward meeting this need.